Pivot tables are another great database like in Excel. PowerPivot is a free add-on from Microsoft that takes PivotTables to the next level. I think PowerPivot can combine tables but I've not tried as VLOOKUP and the occasional custom function have always worked for me.
PowerPivot at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102

Chrome Remote Desktop App is my current favorite remote desktop. Chrome Remote Desktop is cross platform so long as everyone has Chrome.Chrome Remote Desktop is also Android friendly. CRD requires some handshaking while both parties are otherwise communicating. I consider this a good security feature.
I also use Google Voice for a hands-free and no minutes charged experience.https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/remote%20desktop
Charlie

I think it may be useful at this point to inform you of Spybots ENTIRE name. Spybot search and destroy. Doing a simple google search of "spybot" turns up quite a few imposters. If it does NOT say Search and Destroy, it is NOT the real Spybot. I have never had a single problem with spybot and have been using it now for at least 6 years. Its always be a safe, reliable program for me.

As a developer, I have several my software products listed at SnapFiles.com. I appreciate their work and many good possibilities for developers and users.

But two months ago, they started to ignore my request sent via their Contact Us form. I suppose, the same is done for all developers. Previously, they always contacted the requester in one or two days or even hours, but for last two months, I cannot get any response from them...

Yes, CDI offers to install third party programs that are not required for the program to run, but if you pay attention to the unwanted changes or if you have Zemana or WinPatrol, they will block the majority of this garbage.

Yes, these are the most essential software and program that we must have in our system. To make our data protected and secure we must have following software to install in our system.
It offers numerous advantages like:-
1. Security and safety.
2. Protect data from hacker.

So, if your in planning to have the secure system you must always go for such kind of software.

This website organized the apps in a perfect way. Interested user can easily find the required apps and games by exploring the desired categories.
User can also read the user reviews and comment relating to app and find the interested software. In very few website you can find such valuable information.

You really need to check out Veeam Endpoint Backup which is a free backup application for personal or commercial use. It works pretty darn well with disk imaging and recovering.
Version 1.5 is out now but a newer version is soon to be released with more functionality.
The only bad thing is that now you can boot to a USB to recover only because there is no option to create a cold backup from booting from a the USB which is in other products out there.
Hopefully someday they will put those options in.

As stated in the first comment about Veeam Endpoint Backup the bootable disk only allows you to recover. There is no backup from bootable option available yet. I have requested that feature for a while now but as of today, there is still no backup from bootable device option.
On a side note, I have never received any SPAM messages from Veeam since signing up to download the installer.

Another note that the name has changed from Veeam Endpoint Backup to Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows FREE 2.1.

Adobe Reader now provides to Fill&Sign, Annotate for free, no other tool required.
For free merge i found a free tool called PDFsam. This can be downloaded as a zip file and the free features can be used. No internet required. No need to uoload sensitive PDFs.

I've been having the same problem on a Windows 7 machine (Wired) (as well as on a Windows 10 laptop, wireless). MOST infuriating since it means I cannot actually use a machine to access the internet and chase down possible solutions.
On the WIn 7 desktop machine I can occasionally and intermittently get on but after a minute or two lose connection and get a DNS message. Router seems AOK as I can use wireless internet connection through my router with Android devices.
Grrrrrr.

Actually, you will need to look at View Update History - not Installed Updates to see the status, at least under Windows 7. Installed updates will only show those that were successfully installed.
Otherwise, great article!

Just got off their free website. Very impressive, so downloaded Riffstation's beta software. Been playing the guitar all my life, so it's more of an algorithmic tour de force for me, but I have a 16-year old who picked up the guitar a couple of years ago, and is singing with it. This program opens vast new worlds for her. I'm pretty much mesmerized by it myself. Thanks, Gizmo.

Thanks for the videoconverter analysing and rating, it's great! I tried two versions of Freemake Video Converter 4.1.5.4 and then 4.1.3 to convert mov to avi, dvd to avi, mpeg2 to avi. Freemake Video Converter 4.1.5.4 worked great with Win7-64, but crashed then and again when I tried to merge up to hundred mpeg2 files even without converting. Once I had luck to merge 90 mpeg2 with primary size 2.36 Gb. But only once. So, then I tried older version Freemake Video Converter 4.1.3 and it works well. Only problem was the bounded soft like new browser or toolbars. So, I needed to unistall some of them and run Ccleaner to clean my registry. Freemake Video Converter is great for your handycam, pretty fast and easiest, completely automatic, but for torrent movies converting I prefer XviD4PSP5 - better adapting quality, wide settings, choosing audio streams, etc. Thanks again!

On my ipad2, my speaker does not work. I can hear using FaceTime but the person receiving CANNOT hear ME. I know the trouble is my ipad and not their device. Can you please help me solve the problem. Thanks.

I run windows 7 and already had the earlier onenote 13, today I clicked on the link and downloaded the update. It supposedly installed, but has made no difference to OneNote's use, still only good when online.

I did not respond to any adds. I installed the app then as soon as the App was started my malware program came up with an instant message, "Progarm infected' Also there were unwanted pictures already installed. I am not saying that any of this was Jojo Yee's fault it could have been hacked into in some way.

I really think I've been hacked into. A while ago I was on a new pain med. very strong, so I wasn't thinking clearly having two things go on at the same time,I get a phone call from an Indian sounding man saying he is from microsoft and everytime I sign onto my email I am leaking info. Go to start and type in Ammyy then he quickly takes me off that page a cmd box opens and by now ugh duh, you've just been hacked you stoned jerk. So he has control of my computer. The cmd box stops and there is over 14,000 errors, see he says very bad. He can fix for me for only $300.00 I say NO! he persists lowering the price at the same time I have my A/C guy standing there asking me for $375.00 for a part they replaced 8 months ago. Bottom line my computer is never the same restore after restore and a million M.S. updates my email password will work for a week and then I'm locked out of my acct. Right now I am locked out of both yahoo and MSN EMAILS SAYING TOO MANY ATTEMPTS. So I needed some freeware (on a small pension and ss/disab) to break this connection once and for all.
And YES!! I know what I did was stupid but chronic pain, discs out and broken bones that are beyond surgery can make a person do something she would have never done in her right mind.
P.S. sorry this is so long but I am mad enough at myself for being so stupid in the first place.Hope someone can help me???

I read about SecurityKiss here and used it for about 6 months without any incident. Then one day it said I had to re-register to continue. Ok, I did, then a few weeks later it would show that I had used it for 23 hrs. when in reality I had just signed on. I don't understand it's behavior. Finally it just stopped working urging me to view the packages available that I could purchase to continue uninterrupted. I just uninstalled it getting nowhere. Now I kind of feel naked without my VPN shielding me.

Will try HotSpot shield hope this works indefinitely without incident. Excellent site by the way,, you guys have very detailed information and it's very explanatory. Keep up the great work! This is my "GO TO FIRST SITE" whenever I need anything.

Thank You for this information, I did go to that web link and I was relieved to see there was no check mark there. I would suppose thats due to not joining any circles and all the other stuff they try to throw at you, also, my identity is a complete fake. Everything everywhere I go I have different aliases. Even on windows its an alias. I try to keep private, but I suppose even this is not enough these days.

This is an amazing - and scary - article. I thought I had a handle on how to create safe passwords, but the variations this cracking process easily applies shows me I'm not any safer than the majority of otherwise uninformed users. Everything changes today.

Willrun4fun, what would be your choice of distribution for use on an old, underpowered PC? I've not used Linux before, but I'm ready to give it a try to make some currently unusable hardware useful again.

I run windows vista on a PC with a common access card reader to access a government email account when I am traveling. It normally works. However, I am never able to view any encrypted emails. I know that I need to download SMIME but I have not been able to do so successfully. Do you have any recommendations?

Your info is now bad due to updates...WinMerge dropped the running on W9x an XP about version 2.12.something.
I need it to run on W98SE but those ver now will not run there.
I have requested an older version from them because I have not been able to find a workable version for W9x.

Could I suggest a close look at the Marvin reader app? http://www.marvinapp.com/ I find it absolutely excellent in every way.
For reading it has freely adjustable fonts, sizes, line spacing, paragraph spacing, margins, text and background colours etc - you can set the appearance of the book exactly as it suits you.
It has facilities for searching, bookmarks, notes, highlighting text. It also has the most incredible "A.I." Artificial Intelligence facility. Marvin will 'read' a book for you and, (to quote the web-site), you can ..
"•Look up characters and other names in the book in Wikipedia or anywhere on the Internet straight from within the app.
•Annotate names in the book and share your research.
•Find out where a name appeared first in the book. This is great if you forgot who a character is and need to quickly look it up.
•Fetch articles about the book and author biographies.
•Learn more about the book. Was it made into a movie, a play, a radio drama?
•Find and attach links to web content such as reviews and videos.
•Build summaries of the book."

If you store your e-books from your PC in Dropbox it will pick them up from there. It also interfaces really well with the best PC-based e-book cataloging program, Calibre.

I had one instance where I required support on it (I couldn't work out what I was doing wrong with some bookmarks), and I found the response from the author to be really prompt (less than an hour on a Saturday morning!), completely relevant and pointed out my error very politely. An absolutely excellent app, free of charge, with great support - what more do you need?

I have been using Q-Dir for many years and it is my absolute default file and folder manager. I did evaluate many other Explorer-type file managers at the time and all of them had something lacking. The big difference to me was the level of customisation that Q-Dir permitted me.

There's the obvious things like the actual view: 1, 2, 3 or 4 panes (I use 2 for 99% of my work). But, as a small example, one thing I didn't realise how useful it would be is colour-coding files according to their type or extension. At first I thought this would be a gimmick, but it's become part of how I manage data now. Many friends and colleagues have commented, positively, on this. In the same folder, I may have a bunch of Word files (coloured blue), PDFs (coloured red) and Excel files (coloured green). You can specify exactly what colour you want for every different file extension if you wish.

What about the built-in app launcher for other programs? I love this, especially for small tasks like Windows calc, CharMap, command line etc. There's nothing to stop you using it to launch a text editor (Notepad++ is a favourite), or browsers, or an office suite ...

Someone previously mentioned copying issues. I use TeraCopy for all my copying tasks and set it as the default for that. It gets launched automatically by either Windows Explorer or Q-Dir when required.

There's more to Q-Dir than just being an excellent file/folder manager. Have a look under the lid and see what else it can do.

This powerful MP4 trimmer--Avdshare Video Converter can cut files in any format like MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, VOB, DV, FLV, RMVB, AVCHD, MPEG, M2TS, etc. In addition, there are various output options to let you keep the original file format or convert it to other format.

Loved Comodo and been using it for a few years....but when I upgraded to 7.0 it just seemed to royally screw my system over. I wonder if there's guides or anything regarding this. I'm also getting tired of the ads they're starting to pop-up now every like 10 min.

It basically made my computer unable to shut down (gets frozen on the shutting down screen), unable to install or uninstall programs (for some reason can't do windows update either), made certain programs unresponsive (may be the HIPS blocking it), and messed with my ethernet (because it installed something in my Local Area Connection properties). Everything returns to normal after removing Comodo while putting my computer in safe mode. After looking into it a bit, I think the security in 7.0 was just overly beefed causing me unable to do anything because it was just blocking everything, or the update reset my previous settings and just went back to being overprotective.....not entirely sure but it was not a pleasant experience. For now, I just removed Comodo and am trying out the Privatefirewall one until I can research why the 7.0 was screwing with my system.

I guess this program only works with error messages. I installed it and attempted to copy text off a standard page with no results. I fail to see the usefulness of this program after my initial attempt.

I just made a donation because this site has provide more useful information than any site on the internet. Your tech specialist are the best. I almost receive too much information from you but that is ok. I have been having problems with my hard disk and the information you provided has be very helpful and most importantly easily to find. All the software reviews save me time and point to some great stuff. I heard about Dropbox, LastPass

Thanks Ian .......
I often wonder where we would be without Gizmo's Tech Support Alert.
It's my turn-to whenever I need an absolutely unbiased and honest review of free software.
Cheers from Bundanoon Australia.

I downloaded Rufus but do not know what I am supposed to put into the 1st, 2nd & 4th text fields. I am running a Windows 7x64 system with a 500GB NTFS formatted main system hard disk. I also do not know what GPT is. Please help.

I just registered because this is the only thread that I have found that actually addresses this problem. Simple searches return something entirely different.

That said, it is a good work around with no decent UI (I join the chorus of "I want my XP SP3"). However, I have encountered a new and confusing problem:

I have the color set at 196 196 196 and when I restart my computer, all the office programs use this accordingly. If the computer "locks" or goes to sleep, however, it returns to the bright white of 255 255 255. When I check the registry, it is still 196 196 196 and I have to restart to get the colors to turn back.

This is all super great information. I learned a lot from this thread.

Would you guys please give me your opinion?

I am looking for a distro that:

1. Will run well on a P4 with 512MB of Ram
2. Is "Mom ready," meaning, your mom or grandma could sit down and just start doing her thing without getting lost.
3. Is a stable choice, meaning it will be around for a while and I won't have to babysit it very much.

Those three conditions are key, and should narrow down the choices quite a bit.

Bonus Points: It will fit on a CDROM.
Double Bonus Points: It will look pretty, for the office ladies.

I am engaged in a volunteer project where I need to update a bunch of old XP desktops and laptops for a local non-profit office. Some of the machines don't have a DVD drive, and can't be set in the BIOS to boot from USB.

I don't mind tweaking a setup a little bit. I always have to make changes to the way any Windows.

I am old enough to have experienced getting work done on a 286, so I just can't stand the idea of junking all these nice P4 computers (That I would have killed to own at one point in history)

ImgBurn v2.5.8.0: Major Geeks editor says their version v2.5.8.0 has no Open Candy and I noted the file size is smaller than the ImgBurn v2.5.8.0 offered "from ImgBurn". The Softpedia one is the same smaller size as MajorGeeks. I did not run a checksum. I used to use imgBurn, but with the controversy, I decided to try BurnAware when I reloaded after upgrade to Windows 10.

PING CAUTION: I was giving PING a first test by backing up a fresh Win 7 Pro install on a Dell Optiplex 330. I told PING to save both the System 100MB and C: (rest of 80GB drive) to a USB drive and to save NTFS details. It started, ran a few seconds, then shut down the PC. (Shutdown is the setting I used.) The PC THEN WOULD NOT BOOT. It said "Disk Read Error". I found it only wrote a few small files to the USB drive. I put the corrupt source drive in a USB adapter to look. I found it now has a 102MB raw partition, 74GB UNALLOCATED, and a 8GB raw healthy primary. I don't know if this was related to the hardware, the fact that I specified 2 partitions, that it was Win7, or something else. PING forums mentioned a few related items such as XP source corruption, that PING writes stuff to the source (maybe temp files?), and a mention of issues with certain Dell models. Does it really try to write to the source? Over the years, with other software, I have had a few bad images but never corrupted the source drive! (I am sure I selected the correct source and destination.)

Anyway, I think I should look for a safer free imaging solution for the non-profit I am supporting.

I have had Freemake v 3.2.1 for a while. I noticed the log entry you mentioned about the logo and some other comments so am trying to decide if I want to upgrade. As for the logo, if you have any other editing software, I assume it could be trimmed off the end.

QUESTION: The FAQ has this item "How to uninstall AVG Security Toolbar?". Does this Pro version install the toolbar or any other undesirables? I am waiting to find out before I install it.
BTW: I had no trouble getting the email with code and download link. Just had to wait about 5 minutes. THANKS!

I agree and also normally only do such operations from a bootable CD. I assume the installer gives you a program to do operations on other than the system disk as well as an option to create a bootable CD? I was going to temporarily install it only long enough to create the CD. Is that linked .ISO download the exact same version CD as the one created by the installed app? If so, why install it?

I have been receiving the emails for years. I highly recommend subscribing. If you are too busy to read them all then just delete until you see one where you just can't resist looking. Each article also has related links at the bottom. You will be tempted to follow some on them as well. BTW, the author responded quickly when I had a suggestion/question about the site. rhiannon, I am you got the word out. They deserve the publicity and I think most GF readers will enjoy TIFO.

ImgBurn v2.5.8.0: Major Geeks editor says their version v2.5.8.0 has no Open Candy and I noted the file size is smaller than the ImgBurn v2.5.8.0 offered "from ImgBurn". The Softpedia one is the same smaller size as MajorGeeks. I did not run a checksum. I used to use imgBurn, but with the controversy, I decided to try BurnAware when I reloaded after upgrade to Windows 10.

Also...I was out of Google+ for awhile and then got back in. I still can't comment on a YouTube video, I think because I have Java turned off unless I approve it, instance by instance or by approving the site.

It would be a great idea to provide readers with a list of what functionality will stop working if we get out of Google+.

I have every setting for privacy and circles locked down because I do not and will never use Google+ as a social service.

As for ads, there are numerous add-ons (at least in Firefox) that make it possible for me to never see a Google ad in my email. Yay. At the moment I'm using AdBlocker for Gmail and AdBlockPlus. The latter slaps down all ads on web pages.

And while it'd be nice to be able to comment in YouTube, I can live without it.